🇺🇸⚔️🇮🇷 The U.S. has run out of ideas on how to break the stalemate with Iran

The request from a senior officer at the US military command carrying out President Donald Trump’s war with Iran came in an email: We need ideas.

“We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” an officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message. A second source also said that a senior US military officer sent the message last week soliciting new ideas for how to deal with Iran.

The crowdsourcing-style query, which military officials said was unusual over email, is one sign of the limited — and potentially unpalatable —options available to Trump to force Iran into a deal on his terms. Hoping to find an alternative, the official at CENTCOM kicked off the brainstorming session via email to see if anyone had a better idea. The second source said CENTCOM is looking at everything, acknowledging it needs to reevaluate the strategy.

“U.S. Central Command has a long history of thinking and working in innovative ways,” Capt. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesperson for CENTCOM, said in a statement. “Admiral Cooper, in particular, reaches out to members of our great team, regardless of rank, to achieve the highest levels of operational performance possible.”

The email preceded Trump’s threat to launch new strikes against Iran, only to call them off over the weekend after regional officials — namely Saudi Arabia’s crown prince — intervened by calling the president and urging him to de-escalate.

🔗 https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/03/politics/us-military-iran-war-troops-punish?Date=20260803&Profile=CNN

📖 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇬🇧 John Washington, great-grandfather of George Washington, was a leading Indian fighter who obliterated Indian tribes that had mercilessly murdered outnumbered white settlers, including women and children:

"Evidently in reaction the Doegs had turned their hostilities to the whites although the churchgoers at Hen's simple home did not give any thought to such causes. Confirming their worst apprehensions, a war party had been bold enough to swoop out of the forest into a public clearing and murder a settler without provocation, even while his distant neighbors were approaching the church. In a group response, the men decided to go after the Indians right then.

"The county militia was quickly mustered around its lieutenant colonel, John Washington. These county units were the only forces for maintaining law and order, including protection against Indian uprisings and attacks from England's enemies. When Colonel Washington's militia marched out of the clearing, the force was joined by frontier people carrying muskets, their powderhorns hung over their shoulders.

"Following the Doegs, Colonel Washington ignored the treaty which forbade armed bodies to enter another colony's territory, and led the aroused settlers across the Potomac into Maryland. The Doegs had by then retired to the neighborhood of the Susquehannocks. In anticipation of the later aphorism "the only good Indian is a dead Indian," the Virginia force opened fire on Susquehannock and Doeg indiscriminately"

-The Virginia Dynasties by Clifford Dowdey

📝 For his efforts suppressing Native Americans, the Susquehannock gave John the nickname of "Town Destroyer". Some eight decades later, during the French-Indian War, the Seneca would bestow the same title upon Washington's great-grandson, George, for both his own prowess in warfare against the tribes, and in remembrance of the destruction incurred by his ancestor.

📎 The Old World Show

📝 🇫🇷 🔥 France’s Wildfires Are Swallowing Its Politics

The most hotly debated issue has been over the country’s aging fleet of amphibious firefighting planes, the Canadairs. Though a dozen planes comprise the fleet, five have been out of service since the start of the fires, nearly halving its effectiveness. Inevitably, figures from across the political spectrum have joined in a chorus of criticism, faulting Macron’s government for this shoddy state of affairs.

The lame-duck Macron has made their job easier with his claim that no one could have foretold the magnitude of this summer’s heat waves and fires in France. This is paradoxical for two reasons. First, in his response to this summer’s firestorms, Macron has fallen back on the mantra “Qui aurait pu prédire?”—“Who could have predicted?”—first pronounced during the heat waves of 2022. Second, it is odd that a president committed to battling climate change would not know that environmental scientists have, in fact, been predicting such cataclysmic weather events for years.

As for the RN, the party to the extreme right of Renaissance, it remains largely mired in the Dark Ages. As an analysis of the party’s recent voting record reveals, it has consistently supported cuts proposed by the government to the civil security budget, which includes the ground and air forces for firefighting. With many members who have continued to deny the reality of climate change and dismissed the increasingly dire warnings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global group of climate scientists, the RN finds itself caught between the rock of repeated heat waves and the stone of raging firestorms. Predictably, Le Pen and her lieutenants have thus been busy lambasting the scarcity of Canadairs for the fires and scarcity of air conditioners for the heat waves.

To the left, no less predictably, the environmental positions are decidedly greener. From the center-left Socialist Party to the extreme-left LFI, the parties have consistently voted to augment the nation’s firefighting resources. Equally important, they have made climate change a centerpiece of their political platforms.

He has even proposed reinventing the map of France, transforming the existing political regions into “éco-régions,” with increased powers to respond to climate change. At a recent rally in Brittany, the fiery leader of the LFI declared that his plan would “transform the French Republic into an ecological republic.”

According to Mélenchon’s many critics, however, he may well turn France into a demagogical republic.

In many respects, Le Pen and Mélenchon embody the old saw that extremes eventually meet. Both prefer to think of themselves as leaders of movements and not parties, thus setting themselves against the declining reputation of traditional politics. Both share, as well, little love for the Gaullist republic. Mélenchon has long argued for the creation of a Sixth Republic, one that would sweep away what he describes as the “dangerous” institutions of the fifth iteration. (Importantly, a Sixth Republic ranked high among the demands of the seismic “yellow vest” movement during Macron’s first term—and which threatened to end it prematurely.)

Mélenchon insists that the Fifth Republic has passed its expiration date. In fact, it is in advanced state of moldering if, as the LFI website declares, “each generation is a new people” and thus deserves a new constitution. What better underscores this claim than the fact that, during lifetime of the Fifth Republic, women won several rights, including the rights to birth control, abortion, and parity, while the population has grown more interracial?

Moreover, Mélenchon—who cites Maximilien Robespierre, the revolutionary leader who gave the gift of the Reign of Terror to France—dreams of a republic where all power resides with the legislative branch. This ignores both the bloody horrors of the Terror and the dismal failures of two previous = parliamentary republics, whose paralysis and indecisiveness led to authoritarian coups. (In the first case, the Second Republic gave way to Napoleon III in 1851; in the second case, about one century later, de Gaulle signed the obituary for the Fourth Republic.) Equally unsettling is the expanded role that Mélenchon gives to the use of referendums, the very same populist tool that both Napoleon III and de Gaulle used to maintain themselves in power.

Like Mélenchon, Le Pen wishes to turbocharge the use of the referendum, which—she believes—will support her efforts to make a new constitutional obligation for “la préférence nationale,” or “national preference.” This seemingly banal phrase would, in effect, abolish birthright citizenship in France and limit social rights, including employment and housing, to citizens.

These goals not only violate the republican principles of 1789, but they also violate the laws of the European Union, transforming France into an explicitly racist and rogue nation.

This hardly bodes well for the future of the Fifth Republic. Brice Teinturier, the director of the polling institute Ipsos, observed that the “overwhelming popular sentiment is that politicians are preoccupied with their internecine battles over 2027 while no one is paying attention to their concerns.”

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu put this in harsher terms: The real risk, he said, is that the French are disgusted “by this welter of egos so detached from reality.” While the France of the Fifth Republic literally burns, it appears that popular disenchantment with mainstream parties portends that the time-tested institutions and constitution of that republic might so burn as well.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/31/france-wildfires-macron-politics-le-pen-melenchon/

📝 🇺🇸 🌹 ‘The Democratic Party is asleep at the wheel’: Democratic socialists are strategizing for their biggest moment yet

Amid the corporate carpeting and industrial artwork of McCormick Place, the Democratic Socialists of America spent a rainy weekend preparing their next steps for taking over the Democratic Party and taking down capitalism.

The “DSA Merch” table had $30 T-shirts and $45 sweatshirts with roses and Green New Deal slogans. A table from a local socialist bookstore stocked Palestinian poetry collections, Black Panthers histories, “The Communist Manifesto” and a children’s book called “Prisons Must Fall.”

The attendees at the lakefront convention center called one another comrades. A pamphlet with a sketched red fist laid out the group’s program, including “a future without capitalism,” where “food, education, energy, medicine and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities.” It encouraged supporters to dream of a world where they don’t have to worry about paying rent or loans and can embrace “a socialist day off.” It pitched a 32-hour workweek, universal healthcare, reparations for slavery, and “steps towards fully abolishing the police and prison system.”

It said the DSA wants to “replace the president and Supreme Court with an executive judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress,” and it wants that Congress to be an expanded House of Representatives with an abolished Senate — a position DSA co-chair Megan Romer stuck by in a recent Fox News interview that went viral.


The DSA has taken a strategic approach to growing its power within the Democratic Party, picking off two House incumbents already this year and potentially more this month. As the group’s summit in Chicago made clear, its members see this as only the beginning of a fight against both Republicans and Democrats alike.


A recent CNN poll found that one-third of Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents identify as democratic socialists. Zohran Mamdani, a proud DSA member, is mayor of the nation’s largest city; Francesca Hong is running strong in this month’s primary for governor in Wisconsin; and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is widely discussed as a potential candidate for president in 2028.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/03/politics/democratic-socialists-of-america-convention-dsa-platform-democrats-midterms

⬇️ Continued:

📎 CNN

📊 🇺🇸 🌹 A third of Democrats now identify as democratic socialists

Democratic-aligned adults are generally comfortable with the possibility of their party nominating a candidate who identifies as a democratic socialist.

While enthusiasm is considerably higher among democratic socialists, 64% of Democratic-aligned adults who do not identify as democratic socialists would be at least OK with such a candidate, while 36% would be upset or uneasy.

Although democratic socialists are just as likely as other Democratic-leaning Americans to say the Democratic Party needs to be completely reformed or needs major changes, they are more likely to see as positive changing the current leadership of the party and nominating younger candidates. Notably, they are nearly twice as likely to support the party moving to the left on policy issues.

Who makes up the democratic socialist wing of the Democratic Party’s base? According to CNN’s poll, Democratic-aligned Americans who identify as democratic socialists:

Tend to be younger (59% are younger than 45, compared to 46% of non-democratic socialists aligned with the Democratic Party) and are more likely to be White (57% to 49%)

Are less likely to have a college degree (66% to 54%) and more likely to earn less than $100,000 a year (76% to 65%)

Are more likely to say they are extremely motivated to vote this year (66% of those who are registered voters say so, compared to 57% for non-democratic socialists), though both groups overwhelmingly support Democratic congressional candidates (99% of democratic socialists and 94% of non-democratic socialists)

Are more positive toward the Democratic Party. They are more likely to hold favorable views of the Democratic Party (68% to 60%) and its congressional leaders, and more likely to have negative views of the Republican Party and its congressional leaders

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/30/politics/cnn-poll-a-third-of-democrats-now-identify-as-democratic-socialists

#BREAKING
🇮🇷❌🇴🇲🚢 – UKMTO confirmed a cargo vessel was struck minutes ago 20 nautical miles off the Omani coast. The office did not specify whether the crew is safe or whether the vessel sustained damage.

▶️ The attack took place roughly in the same area where another vessel was attacked yesterday, although without being struck.

@GeoPWatch

⚡️🇺🇸 – For the first time in a decade, the Democrats lead the Republicans on economic policy, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll which asked only registered voters.

▶️ The same poll found Trump's popularity has further declined to 35%, down from 37% last month, and that if congressional elections were held today, the Democrats would win with a +5 advantage (D: 42%, R: 37%).

@GeoPWatch

🇺🇸⚡️ — Anduril Industries is in advanced talks to establish a production facility for its unmanned surface vessels (USVs) at the Sparrows Point industrial site in Maryland, WSJ reports.

The company has signed a memorandum of understanding for the project, which could involve hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, though a final lease has not yet been signed.

The proposed facility would manufacture and test autonomous boats, with support from Maryland state officials under discussion.

🇺🇸⚡️ — At midnight, U.S. Southern Command's Joint Task Force–Southern Spear (JTF 84-2) will be redesignated as Joint Task Force–Western Hemisphere (JTF-WHEM).

SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Donovan says the new task force will serve as the command's "action arm," expanding its operational role across the Western Hemisphere.

🍏❌😀 — Telegram has been removed from Apple's App Store.